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China to ease one child policy amid sweeping reforms

Leo Lewis

November 15 2013, 1:37pm, The Times

China has a thriving black market for babies as a result of the one-child policyWang Zhao/AFP/Getty

Beijing is poised to enact historic changes to its “one child” birth control policy, the highly controversial and sometimes agonisingly abusive system that has shaped Chinese family life for more than three decades.

The proposed reform, which reflects rising panic over China’s skewed demographics, could signal the beginning of the end for a policy blamed for forced sterilisations, a thriving black market for babies and a potentially destabilising excess of 25 million unmatched single men.

The Government continues to defend the policy, arguing that since it came into force in the late 1970s it has prevented the births of some 400 million extra people and spared China from food shortage and resource conflict.